6.3.11.1 Installing the Audit Log Plugin

The audit log plugin is named audit_log. To
be usable by the server, the plugin library object file must be
located in the MySQL plugin directory (the directory named by
the plugin_dir system
variable). If necessary, set the value of
plugin_dir at server startup to
tell the server the location of the plugin directory.

To load the plugin at server startup, use the
--plugin-load option to name the
object file that contains the plugin. With this plugin-loading
method, the option must be given each time the server starts.
For example, put the following lines in your
my.cnf file:

[mysqld]
plugin-load=audit_log.so

If object files have a suffix different from
.so on your system, substitute the correct
suffix (for example, .dll on Windows).

Alternatively, to register the plugin at runtime, use this
statement (changing the suffix as necessary):

mysql> INSTALL PLUGIN audit_log SONAME 'audit_log.so';

INSTALL PLUGIN loads the plugin,
and also registers it in the mysql.plugins
table to cause the plugin to be loaded for each subsequent
normal server startup.

If the plugin is loaded with
--plugin-load or has been
previously registered with INSTALL
PLUGIN, you can use the --audit-log
option at server startup to control plugin activation. For
example, to load the plugin and prevent it from being removed at
runtime, use these options:

[mysqld]
plugin-load=audit_log.so
audit-log=FORCE_PLUS_PERMANENT

If it is desired to prevent the server from running without the
audit plugin, use --audit-log
with a value of FORCE or
FORCE_PLUS_PERMANENT to force server startup
to fail if the plugin does not initialize successfully.